"I am afraid something is broken. I don't know how much handling I can stand. Ah! This is awful!"

And it was true that when Luke and Neale raised him from the ground the poor man screamed aloud and instantly fainted.

The injured man remained unconscious until the boys got him into the automobile. The Kenway car was a big, seven-pa.s.senger machine. But when the whole party was in it, it certainly was crowded.

Luke held the sinking form of Mr. Pendleton upright against the cushions. He was glad the man was unconscious. The older girls tried to hush the weeping Pendleton children. The three other little folks were in front with Neale O'Neil, and even Sammy Pinkney was subdued.

Neale drove the car as carefully as possible, and in half an hour it stopped before the little cottage on Plane Street. There was a telephone next door, and before even the older boys carried the injured man into the house, Ruth had called their family physician, Dr. Forsyth.

"And remember, Doctor," the girl said firmly, "whatever the bill is, it is a Kenway bill. You understand?"

"I understand that Ruth Kenway is up to one of her usual blessed tricks," rejoined the doctor over the wire. "I will be right over."

Neale drove Luke and the little folks home, while Ruth and Agnes remained with the frightened Mrs. Pendleton until Dr. Forsyth arrived and had made his examination. He soon had Mr. Pendleton much more comfortable both in mind and body.

"Nothing broken," the physician said comfortingly. "Your back is strained and you've got to lie quiet. But we'll have you up in a couple of weeks, Mr. Pendleton."

He could see, as well as the girls, that the little family were in straitened circ.u.mstances. He gave Mrs. Pendleton a warm handclasp as he left and said:

"I will come in once in a while to see how he does. But do not let my coming worry you, Mrs. Pendleton. I understand your circ.u.mstances, and you tell your husband that he can be of easy mind. If there should be anything due for my services, its payment has already been arranged for."

"Those blessed Kenway girls!" exclaimed Mrs. Pendleton. "I don't know how I can ever thank them."

CHAPTER IV

WAS IT FOOLISH?

Ruth, and her three sisters as well, loved to play "Lady Bountiful."

Having been placed for a time in close financial straits themselves, the older girls at least well understood the plight of those unfortunate people whom they met who were short of funds.

The condition of the Pendletons' exchequer was a source of worry to Ruth especially. She had ways of helping the children and Mrs. Pendleton which were not too obvious; but how to aid the man of the family when he could once more get about was a question not so easily answered.

She saw Mr. Howbridge one day in his office and put the matter up to her guardian with her usual practical sense.

"Mr. Oscar Pendleton does not impress me at all as a man who would commit a crime. I do not see how he came to be accused by his employers.

There is either something very much the matter with the judgment of the members of that firm, Kolbeck and Roods, or there is something so queer in the affair that it needs expert looking into."

"You think he could not have been tempted to steal, Ruth?" asked Mr.

Howbridge, giving her trouble the attention that it deserved, for he knew well her sound sense.

"A man with a nice wife and three such cute kiddies? Impossible!"

"If he needed more money than he was making?"

"I have asked Mrs. Pendleton for the particulars-as she knows them. The goods stolen could not have been sold under cover for more than a thousand dollars. And Mr. Pendleton was earning a fair salary and they were getting on well, and paying for their home. He would be crazy to do such a thing for a mere thousand dollars."

"That sounds reasonable," replied the lawyer. "I tell you what I will do, Ruth. I'll have one of my clerks look up the case and get all the particulars. Perhaps something can be done to explain the matter and relieve Oscar Pendleton of the onus of this charge."

"That is my good guardian!" cried Ruth. "You are a regular fairy G.o.dmother. You--"

She suddenly stopped to cough a little. Mr. Howbridge frowned.

"What does Dr. Forsyth mean by letting you get such a cold on your chest?" the lawyer demanded. "I thought I paid him to keep you Corner House girls in good health."

"Chinese style?" laughed Ruth. "Well, his system has slipped a cog somehow, Guardy, for both Agnes and I have colds."

The colds did not enter into the consideration of the two older Kenway sisters when it came to the night of Carrie Poole's big party. The Pooles, who lived in a big house out on the Buckshot Road, always gave several very enjoyable entertainments during the winter season. The date of the first one of this season was close at hand, and Ruth and Agnes had insisted on having new frocks for the occasion.

That brought Miss Ann t.i.tus into the old Corner House for several days; for after all, n.o.body could quite cut and fit a party dress like the gossipy spinster whom Tess had once called "such a fluid talker." It was from the birdlike Miss t.i.tus and her rather tart tongue that the Corner House girls learned of another slant in the Pendleton matter.

"Yes, I got plenty of work, the goodness' knows," Miss t.i.tus observed in response to a query from Aunt Sarah Maltby, in whose room the seamstress always worked when she was at the Corner House. "I was that glad when Mrs. Pendleton said she couldn't have me this fall as usual, that I didn't know what to do. It give me a chance to take on other folks that could afford to pay better," and Miss t.i.tus sniffed.

"Oh!" exclaimed Agnes who chanced to be present, "you know Mrs.

Pendleton, then? You know her husband was hurt, of course?"

"I know they say he was hurt," responded the sharp-tongued woman promptly. "But as to that--"

"We know he was hurt, Miss t.i.tus," interposed Ruth, smiling. "For we found him after he fell in the woods and we took him home in our car."

"Do tell!"

"And we think the Pendletons are very nice people, if unfortunate,"

added Ruth, thinking it better to warn the seamstress against going too far. Ruth abhorred ill-natured gossip, and Miss t.i.tus was inclined to repeat the bitter dregs of neighborhood news.

"Well, handsome is as handsome does," said Miss t.i.tus, with a toss of her head. "I must say I think Mrs. Pendleton is a nice woman, and her children are as well behaved as any. But that man--"

"You mean Mr. Pendleton," said Ruth gravely. "We know all about his trouble."

"And I think it is a shame that Kolbeck and Roods should have made such an accusation against him," cried Agnes.

"Hoity-toity!" exclaimed the seamstress. "You have gone off the handle just the same as usual, Aggie Kenway. The man certainly stole those goods."

"Never!" murmured Ruth, almost in horror.

"Yes, he did. I know Mrs. Kolbeck. She told me all about it. Her own son-you know she's Mr. Kolbeck's second wife and her name was Stumpf before she married Kolbeck. Well, Israel Stumpf, Mrs. Kolbeck's own son, told her there wasn't a doubt but that Pendleton-perhaps with somebody to help him-stole those bolts of silk and satin and sold them down to New York."

"Oh, I can't believe it!" murmured Ruth.

"It's a story, I don't care what they say," said Agnes hotly. Agnes could never be anything but partisan. She was always much in favor or much against everybody whom she knew.

"Well, Israel Stumpf works right there in the wholesale house, and he ought to know all about it," declared Miss t.i.tus, nodding emphatically.

"Why ought he to know, Miss t.i.tus?" asked Dot, who proved on this occasion to be "a little pitcher with big ears."

"Because he worked right there with Pendleton."